Steve Webster freely admits he is not a writer. He’s a cop, with almost a quarter-century of service to the South Portland Police Department. He’s been a patrolman, a detective and an officer in the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency.

In that time, he has run into his share of stories. Some he has told; some he has kept inside. A while back, he teamed up with MaineToday Media reporter Trevor Maxwell to tell some of those stories. The result is a self-published book, “One Promise Kept: The Case That Made a Cop, and Others That Almost Broke Him.”

The nonfiction book hinges on a 1998 case that Webster investigated involving two girls, ages 7 and 10. A team of home invaders bound the girls with a cord and threatened to kill them if they didn’t disclose the location of their family’s money.

There was no money, but the girls escaped physical harm.

Webster promised them he would find the felons: thus, the title of this book. There are many more stories than one — all the incidents that have haunted him over the years that he has wanted to get off his chest. 

Q: Why did you decide to write this book now? What was your motive?

A: Initially, I wrote the book for purely selfish reasons. It was a form of therapy for me. I had a lot of things that had gone through my head. I have experienced a lot of things in my career. I started writing one day, and I said to myself, “That’s pretty good.” And I kept going. I realized there were a lot of things I wanted to get out, and I wanted my kids to realize that their dad did something on this earth. That was in the early 2000s. I was in Arizona at a drug conference, and all of the people I went with rented motorcycles. I like to have four tires underneath me, so I went to the pool. I grabbed a pad and started writing. Whatever I wrote in Arizona never made it into the book, but that was a start. 

Q: What made you decide to become a cop?

A: I joined the service right after high school. I had no direction in life. I had no idea where I wanted to go. After I got out of the service, my first sergeant let me borrow one of his books on criminal justice, and I thought it was pretty interesting. So I called my folks, because I was in Germany at the time, and they enrolled me at SMVTI, which is now Southern Maine Community College. I got hired in ’87, and have been here ever since. I’ve worked for South Portland going on 24 years. 

Q: Do you stay in touch with the victims of crimes you investigate?

A: There are some people who touch your heart. You don’t forget them. It’s a lot different when you are a detective, because you spend so much time with these people, almost like you can communicate with them without even talking. On patrol, you’re at a call for five minutes and then you are done. Some people, I stop and visit all these years later. Don’t ask me why. I suppose it’s because I care.

Q: What is the biggest challenge, emotionally or otherwise, of being a police officer these days?

A: The biggest challenge emotionally is just the things we see on a daily basis. Keeping that sense about you that the world is not going to hell, that there are still good people out there. That can be trying at times. Not that we don’t deal with good people. But we deal with a lot of bad people. There are good people who do bad things and bad people who do bad things. How to differentiate between those two is hard. 

Q: What do you want people to take away from this book?

A: What a lot of people have told me is they enjoyed the honesty that I threw into the book. It’s very tough for police officers to open up and show any emotion, let alone say, “This bothered me because this is a difficult profession.” The general public will get a better understanding of where we are coming from. Yes, we are human; yes, we have emotions. 

Q: What has the reaction been?

A: The reaction has been incredible. I had 1,000 copies of this book printed, and to be honest, I would have been happy to have sold half of those. But I sold out that first printing and ordered a second. This has been out since the first of December. I have sold a lot of books, and sold them all over the country.

I didn’t want this to be a typical police book. I wanted it to have some emotion. I wanted it a little bit funny, a little sad. I am very grateful to everyone who has bought one. 

Q: What’s next for you? What are your plans long-term?

A: I really don’t know. I am eligible to retire in a few months. I would like to do something that gives me the opportunity to have a positive impact on a larger group of people. Twenty-five years in this line of work is enough. I’ve gone back to school to get my master’s in leadership for a reason. I want to lead people.

I got my degree two years ago. What I would really like to do is go talk to kids. The youth we have in our state right now, they are our future. I want to help them realize they have more potential than they think.

If I can empower them, that would be great. We as police officers understand how fragile life is. You can be gone tomorrow. Do something today. Nobody is promised tomorrow.

Staff Writer Bob Keyes can be contacted at 791-6457 or at:

bkeyes@pressherald.com

Follow him on Twitter at:

twitter.com/pphbkeyes

 

Copy the Story Link